Abstract: In recent years,new mainstream movies,as an important carrier of mainstream values and ideology,have become a core genre focusing on Chinese movies.How to tell a good Chinese story has become a basic proposition for building a Chinese narrative discourse system.Along with the development of new mainstream movies,“emphasizing image but neglecting narrative” seems to have become a creative trend,and weak narrative has become one of the most obvious shortcomings in the spreading process of new mainstream movies.Under this circumstance,the new mainstream films directed by Zhang Yimou borrow from the classical theatre theory,and take the unity of the plot of the “Three Unifications” as the inner core driving force,and pioneer the hardcore narrative technique,which shows strong narrative tension and leaping forms of life.As a breakthrough in the narrative dilemma of new mainstream movies,hardcore narrative refracts cultural connotation with narrative imagery,realizes cultural dissemination with low-context structure,constructs new genre conventions and aesthetic paradigms for new mainstream movies,and realizes the implicit dissemination of mainstream values.Therefore,the exploration of its narrative structure can provide a meaningful reference for the benign construction of Chinese narrative system.

Key words: new mainstream movies, hardcore narrative, narrative mechanism, cultural connotation